LIFE OF CORBIN HARNEY

Transcription

1 Declaration Calling for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons By Josei Toda, second president of the Soka Gakkai September 8, 1957 I would now like to share with you what I hope you will regard as the foremost of my instructions for the future. As I have long said, the responsibility for the coming era must be shouldered by the youth. Today I would like to state clearly my feelings and attitude regarding the testing of nuclear weapons, a topic that is currently being debated heatedly throughout society. I hope that, as my disciples, you will inherit the declaration I am about to make today and, to the best of your ability, spread its intent throughout the world. Although a movement calling for a ban on the testing of atomic or nuclear weapons has arisen around the world, it is my wish to go further, to attack the problem at its root. I want to expose and rip out the claws that lie hidden in the very depths of such weapons. I wish to declare that anyone who ventures to use nuclear weapons, irrespective of their nationality or whether their country is victorious or defeated, should be sentenced to death without exception. Why do I say this? Because we, the citizens of the world, have an inviolable right to live. Anyone who jeopardizes that right is a devil incarnate, a fiend, a monster. I propose that humankind applies, in every case, the death penalty to anyone responsible for using nuclear weapons, even if that person is on the winning side. Even if a country should conquer the world through the use of nuclear weapons, the conquerors must be viewed as devils, as evil incarnate. I believe that it is the mission of every member of the youth division in Japan to disseminate this idea throughout the globe. Excerpted from wikipedia article: LIFE OF CORBIN HARNEY Corbin Harney (March 24, 1920, Bruneau, Idaho July 10, 2007, near Petaluma, California) was an elder and spiritual leader of the Newe (Western Shoshone) people. Harney reportedly inspired the creation in 1994 of the Shundahai Network, which works for environmental justice and the abolition of nuclear weapons ("shundahai" translates to "peace and harmony with all creation"). The Shundahai Network plays a key role in organizing non-violent civil disobedience aimed at bringing about the closure of the Nevada Test Site, which is located on Western Shoshone land. page 1 of 7 pages

2 Harney devoted his life to working to save the land on which his people have survived for thousands of years. "The food that my people survived on is not here no more on account of this nuclear weapon that we have developed," Harney explains. "The pine nuts aren't here no more, the chokecherries aren't here, the antelope aren't here, the deer aren't here, the groundhog aren't here, the sagehen aren't here." Sometimes called "The hardest working man in shamanism", Harney, for many years, spent most of his time traveling around the world spreading a message about the dangers of nuclear energy and the problems facing our Mother Earth. "The Mother Earth provides us with food, provides us with air, provides us with water. We, the people, are going to have to put our thoughts together, to save our planet here. We've only got one water, one air, one Mother Earth." Harney acted as keynote speaker at the Atomic and Hydrogen Bomb Conference, in 2001, in Nagasaki, Japan, where he was able to speak with other still-recovering survivors of nuclear war. He visited mutated children in Kazakhstan hospitals who lived close to the Russian nuclear test site. He received the 2003 International Nuclear Free Future Solutions award. Harney's formal education ended when he ran away from Indian boarding school at the age of nine. However, he was able to talk to students, government officials, and members of the public about toxins of all kinds: chemicals from mining and industry, and, worst of all, nuclear fallout and radiation poisoning from nuclear testing. He spoke out about the contamination of our water and shared with people a vision that he experienced several years ago. "I was praying to the water and the spirit of the water told me, 'Pretty soon, I'm going to look like clean water, but no one is going to use me'. I didn't really understand what I was told until I went to Kazakhstan in Russia. Kazakhstan is where Russia tested nuclear bombs for many years. Over there I saw water that looks like clean water, but people can't drink it because it is contaminated with radiation... nature put all the living things here for us to take care of, not to destroy them, but to work with them so that we may live with them for many more years." Harney stated a firm belief in communication with the natural elements and all living things and numerous other people have witnessed the results of his work, including rain in drought areas, dry springs which started flowing once more, plants page 2 of 7 pages

3 flourishing where they were sparse before and the return of animals that had not been seen in their native habitats for many years. "We have to come back to the Native way of life. The Native way is to pray for everything. Our Mother Earth is very important. Everything survives on our Mother, the only Mother we've got. We can't just misuse her and think she's going to continue. Let's not destroy the Mother Earth. Let's take care of her and she will take care of us." Harney was also the founder and director of Poo Ha Bah, a traditional healing center in Tecopa, California. "I have established Poo-Ha-Bah for all the people. Poo-Ha-Bah in my language is a very important word -- it s talking about Doctor Water. It s really important to have healing water here, not only as a human -- a lot of animal life have used healing water, a lot of different ways. My people have always traveled for many miles to get into different kinds of healing waters. This is something that we all need, and this is one reason I have looked for healing water and I finally found one in Tecopa, California. I am pretty sure that we all will enjoy the healing water if we ask the healing water to help us with our illness of all different kinds. This is something that our people have talked about for many, many years." Harney was a proponent of universal inclusion and individual spiritual empowerment, We need your help. Who ever you are, whatever color you are, wherever you come from on this Mother Earth of ours. We ve only got this one Earth and we all have to take care of it. So I am asking all of you people throughout the world to unite your selves together. Give us a helping hand so we can take care of all the living things. Trained from childhood in the traditional Newe ways of medicine and spirituality (the two are not viewed separately), Harney noted the extinction of medicinal plants due to the toxins of mining, and the disappearance of many birds and other animals that once roamed the Newe homelands. Beginning in 1957, he worked with medicine women of Battle Mountain, Nevada, running the Sundance Ceremony and sweat lodges as well as helping sick people. As a medicine person, he also worked steadily to preserve and protect the sacred sites and burial grounds of his people. He was raised to view all life as sacred. "Everything is alive and has a spirit to it. The rocks, the mountains, streams, animals, plants, birds, oceans, and so forth," he says. page 3 of 7 pages

4 Harney warned of a quickly approaching time when the Earth is so contaminated by the results of human activity that all the water on the planet will be toxic to all forms of life. His vision, however, was not fatalistic. He remained convinced that humans have the power to turn things around, saying "The water has a life, and we have to pray for it. All the water that comes from the Mother Earth, that's her blood." Harney affirmed that healing and well-being are everyone's business, and that no one is powerless. "Yes, you can. All of us are gifted. We just need to open up the gifts by praying in our own way, singing our own songs and talking to everything out there with love and respect. Don't feel foolish. This is how everything has been sustained for millions of years. This will open up a totally new world for you. Amazing things will happen if you are patient. This is how we will heal ourselves and our Mother Earth." MEDICINE (PRAYER) CIRCLE Back in the days of Corbin Harney, an annual renewal event was blessing the New Year on the ridge across the highway from the main gate of the Nuclear Test Site (NTS) near Mercury, Nevada. This event featured a medicine circle, forming in the darkness around a fire and welcoming the sunrise of the new year. Drumming was always an important part: Corbin himself drummed and chanted on these occasions. At every event held at the ridge across from the main gate of U.S. Department of Energy's Nuclear Test Site (NTS), on the day before the event and on the early morning of the event, a medicine circle formed with Corbin's guidance. Corbin's practice was to welcome everyone on behalf of the Western Shoshone Nation (Newe People), wanting to reassure all that they had a right to be there, that no legitimate challenge to their presence could be made by any authority of any government. Sometimes gatherings included too many people to have every single person speak, but Corbin liked to ask each person present to step into the circle, in turn, and state whatever they were inspired to say about, or coming from, the spiritual path that had led them to the circle. He urged people of all faiths to make statements or prayers, as individuals speaking from the heart. That is the magic or way of the Medicine Circle, seen in the exemplary practice of Corbin Harney. From the point of view of SGI-USA, the medicine circle is a folkway, a cultural event. Although not perhaps a part of Nichiren Buddhist tradition, the medicine circle is nonetheless embraced within the "countless expedient means" of the Buddha (SGI: The Liturgy of Nichiren Daishonin's Buddhism, Excerpts from the Lotus Sutra: Chapter 2: Expedient Means). page 4 of 7 pages

5 WALKING AS A SPIRITUAL PRACTICE Back in the days of Corbin's medicine circles on the ridge across from the Mercury Gate of the NTS, Corbin would walk to the ridge from wherever-we-did-not-know in the early morning. After the medicine circle, Corbin's practice was to walk away whither-wedid-not-know, so that the people gathered would be left on their own, free to act as they decided on their own. No one drove vehicles up onto the ridge, and Corbin like everyone else walked to and from there. The Western Shoshone or Newe people are renowned for their horsemanship, and Corbin grew up riding horses, so it's possible that he rode to someplace near the ridge, left his horse there, and then walked the remainder of the way. In any case, unnoticed in his coming and going, Corbin would appear and then disappear -- not unlike the way that the Lotus Sutra, in the Juryo Han recitation part of the SGI liturgy, explains the disappearance and re-appearance of the Buddha ((SGI: The Liturgy of Nichiren Daishonin's Buddhism, Excerpts from the Lotus Sutra: Chapter 16: The Life Span of the Thus Come One). In many events, not necessarily at the NTS but all around the Southwest of the United States, people have walked in groups as an expression of their unity and as symbolic of a spiritually guided direction. The NDE and the Shundahai network, including Corbin Harney, sometimes organized or supported such walks. Sometimes they would walk one hundred miles or more. Many peoples throughout history have incorporated walking into their spiritual practice, sometimes thought of as pilgrimages. Walking is a universal way, a characteristic way of human life since the most ancient times. (Mildred Lisette Norman ( ), known as "Peace Pilgrim," was a wellknown cross-country walker. In 1952, she became the first woman to walk the entire Appalachian Trail in one season. Starting on January 1, 1953, in Pasadena, California, she adopted the name "Peace Pilgrim" and walked across the United States for 28 years. in 1964, when she stopped logging her miles, she had walked more than 25,000 miles for peace. Expressing her ideas about peace, she referred to herself only as "Peace Pilgrim." Peace Pilgrim's only possessions were the clothes on her back and the few items she carried in the pockets of her blue tunic which read "Peace Pilgrim" on the front and "25,000 Miles on foot for peace" on the back. She had no organizational backing, carried no money, and would not even ask for food or shelter. When she began her pilgrimage she had taken a vow to "remain a wanderer until mankind has learned the way of peace, walking until given shelter and fasting until given food.") At the 100th Monkey Event in the spring of 1992, a number of guests of the Western Shoshone Nation walked across forbidden parts of the Nuclear Test Site (NTS), page 5 of 7 pages

6 and were arrested. In other events, people had marched in front of the main gate, sometimes blocking the gate until arrested for civil disobedience. These were U.S. citizens, including many Native Americans. At all of these events, there were often people who came from around the world among the marchers. For example, young men would fly in, as a group, from Japan on many of these occasions, carrying drums and banners to protest outside the main gate. Drumming was always a part of the events. The 100th Monkey event was part of a popular social/spiritual movement to stop U.S. nuclear weapons testing, called the Nevada Desert Experience (NDE). That became also the name of an organization formed for the purpose of fostering public events that would question the morality and intelligence of the U.S. nuclear weapons program. The NDE organization arose out of the Lenten Desert Experience in 1982 and 1983, including protests against the nuclear pollution of Western Shoshone land at and around the NTS. Although NDE prayer-actions included naturalist appreciation for the Mojave and Great Basin Deserts of North America, NDE activities came to focus -- in conjunction with the Western Shoshone-based Shundahai Network -- on the NTS. The movement's immediate goal of ending nuclear testing at the NTS was met in 1992, after the 100th Monkey, when President George H. W. Bush signed a moratorium on underground nuclear weapons tests. (The nuclear abolition movement, led by NDE and Shundahai, returned to action with the renewal of non-nuclear explosions at the NTS in These "subcritical" bombs use fissile materials which do not reach a self-sustaining chain reaction of a typical nuclear bomb. Explosive yield is low, but small amounts of radiation may be released. These tests suggested to nuclear abolition activists a strong continued interest -- operating within the U.S. Government -- in favor of nuclear weapons. Therefore, the Nevada Desert Experience continued to work for ecological and social peacemaking, with one goal being to clean up and contain the contamination created by 55 years of nuclear testing in Nevada and Western Shoshone country.) That is the way of the Medicine Walk. Although not perhaps a part of Nichiren Buddhist tradition, the medicine walk is nonetheless embraced within the expedient means of the Buddha. INTERFAITH ACTIVITIES OF SGI-USA Excerpted from Charter of the Soka Gakkai International: Purposes and Principles 1. SGI shall contribute to peace, culture and education for the happiness and welfare of all humanity based on the Buddhist respect for the sanctity of life. page 6 of 7 pages

7 2. SGI, based on the ideal of world citizenship, shall safeguard fundamental human rights and not discriminate against any individual on any grounds. 3. SGI shall respect and protect the freedom of religion and religious expression. 4. SGI shall promote an understanding of Nichiren Daishonin's Buddhism through grassroots exchange, thereby contributing to individual happiness. 5. SGI shall, through its constituent organizations, encourage its members to contribute toward the prosperity of their respective societies as good citizens. 6. SGI shall respect the independence and autonomy of its constituent organizations in accordance with the conditions prevailing in each country. 7. SGI shall, based on the Buddhist spirit of tolerance, respect other religions, engage in dialogue and work together with them toward the resolution of fundamental issues concerning humanity. 8. SGI shall respect cultural diversity and promote cultural exchange, thereby creating an international society of mutual understanding and harmony. 9. SGI shall promote, based on the Buddhist ideal of symbiosis, the protection of nature and environment. 10. SGI shall contribute to the promotion of education, in pursuit of truth as well as the development of scholarship, to enable all people to cultivate their individual character and enjoy fulfilling and happy lives. Working together with people of all faiths toward the resolution of fundamental issues concerning humanity is a principle of the SGI. The Lotus Sutra states that the Thus Come One "has deeply entered the boundless" (SGI: The Liturgy of Nichiren Daishonin's Buddhism, Excerpts from the Lotus Sutra: Chapter 2: Expedient Means). There can be no doubt that the expedient means of the Buddha include the way of One Water, One Earth, One Air and One People -- the way practiced for many years in the American interfaith tradition of respect for life, embracing a world and a future free of nuclear weapons. The following is quoted from page 95 (March 17), Buddhism Day by Day: Wisdom for Modern Life (by Daisaku Ikeda) -- "Buddhism teaches that life at each moment embraces all phenomena. This is the doctrine of a life moment possessing three thousand realms, which is the Lotus Sutra's ultimate teaching and Buddhism's essence. Because of the profound way our lives interact with people around us, it is vital that we reach out to others, that we be engaged with our environment and with our local community. A self-absorbed practice or theory without action is definitely not Buddhism." page 7 of 7 pages